Over the last week, I’ve reviewed the websites of 100 Australian churches. These churches are located in every state and territory of Australia, and across denominations.

As I reviewed each website, I put myself in the place of someone who is thinking about going to church this Christmas. And the one question every visitor wants to know is this: “What time is the service?”

I was staggered to find that most churches don’t provide this information. In fact:

58% of these websites have no information about Christmas services.

Of the 42% of websites that did provide this information, it often wasn’t easy to find. In many cases, Christmas service times were displayed somewhere in a rotating banner or took some careful looking to discover.

“We are to care about usability because hard to use products make life harder for people, not easier. And the Christian ethic is to lift people’s burdens – make their lives better – rather than create burdens for them by making their lives harder in order to save ourselves some time and efforts in the design of our products.

This means caring about usability on your website, because usable websites not only will get you better results but also will serve your customers more effectively.”

Christmas is still 3 days away – it’s not too late to check your church’s website, and add this information if it’s missing.